Lightweight plastic articles are used as bottles or containers for a variety of purposes such as holding water or soft drinks and a wide variety of additional products. There has been an expansion in the use of plastic bottles and that expanded utilization of the plastic bottles has required the development of faster machines which are capable of handling large numbers of those lightweight bottles. The inventor of the present invention is the patentee of U.S. Pat. No. 7,117,987, entitled “Article Orientating Apparatus” issued Oct. 10, 2006; U.S. Pat. No. 3,650,368, entitled, “Article Orientating Apparatus” issued Mar. 21, 1972; U.S. Pat. No. 3,662,872, entitled, “Apparatus for Orientating and Feeding Articles” issued May 16, 1972; U.S. Pat. No. 3,948,386, entitled, “Apparatus for Orientating and Feeding Articles” issued Apr. 6, 1976; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,825,695, entitled “Article Orientating Apparatus” issued May 2, 1989.
The bottles have progressively become lighter and the volume of the number of bottles produced has increased so that the speed of unscrambling machines has necessarily increased to handle the increase in numbers of bottles. It is necessary to have positive positioning of the lightweight bottles, all at a high rate of speed. The present invention utilizes gravitational forces to stabilize the lightweight bottles thereby allowing high speed orientation of the bottles.